Week-long Welcomings from Moosylvania: August 8th

Welcome to The Moose Pond! The Welcomings posts give the Moose, old and new, a place to visit and share words about the weather, life, the world at large and the small parts of Moosylvania that we each inhabit.

Welcomings will be posted at the start of each week (usually Saturday night with a Sunday date). To find the posts, just bookmark this link and Voila! (which is Moose for “I found everyone!!”).

The format is simple: each day, the first moose to arrive on-line will post a comment welcoming the new day and complaining (or bragging!) about their weather. Or mentioning an interesting or thought provoking news item. Or simply checking in.

So … what’s going on in your part of Moosylvania?

NOTE: The comments page will split off after 20 or so left margin comments with the most recent comments on the current page. To see the older comments, scroll to the bottom of the page (right before “Leave A Reply”) and use the Pages Tool to view previous pages, shown here with 3 pages of comments available and Page 2 circled.

29 Comments

  1. It’s already 78. I’ll be closing up the house as soon as I post this. The 18.3 KWHs we generated yesterday is highest not only for the month but for several weeks. Middle of summer still and we haven’t reached 20 in a day. Which explains the 153.33 m-t-d.

    Jill’s got a couple of business loan/set up applications out. Hold the Good Thought. The jerkwad harassing her not only opened her trash & started strewing it around her yard night before last, the bastid dumped a bag of it on Tanis’s grave. (The dog killed in the dogfight when the food started running out- Ronald’s dogs. They started “dominance posturing” about 4 days after he disappeared.) Yes, it upset her. As it was intended to do. But really, what evil people!

    Everybody else is at least hanging on and most are keepin on. I wish I had the wealth – which isn’t really even wealth by American culture standards – to help them get out of their situations. Some grocery money or a little dogfood each month helps them keep going. It doesn’t help them to a space where they don’t need that kind of help any longer. sigh. (It doesn’t have to be me. I don’t have ego-investment in being a white savior or something. But nobody else else seems to either have it or want to. Or both.) More Holding of Good Thoughts.

    Anyway, I need to close up the house before outside temps hit 80. Then coffee and twitter. Bright the day, Meeses. {{{HUGS}}}

  2. Good Wednesday morning, Moose People! It’s 75 F. here in Ashburn on a sunny morning, on its way up to 98 F.

    Whereas usually all thunderstorms give Ashburn a wide berth, verily I say unto Moose Peeps everywhere that yesterday afternoon we coulda used an ark. It rained mightily just as Kathy was glazing my hair with watermelon-scented hairspray in the barber shop, so I waited until the rain slackened before I put up my umbrella and ran out.

    Then, before dinner the heavens OPENED and it rained, howled, and I don’t know what all. Thor cast thunderbolts and whatshername lit up the sky with lightning. It was quite spectacular, really. I don’t remember when it last rained so hard.

    Today will be very busy with housework, writing chores, and getting my nails done at 11. I made Apple-Walnut Bran Muffins for breakfast this morning and absolutely must make the Peach-Blueberry Crisp for dinner tonight. Those peaches are going to turn into brandy, they’ve been ripening for so long.

    It’ll be interesting to see whether it rains this afternoon. At this rate I shan’t have to water the garden for days.

    Wishing a good day to all at the Pond.

  3. Good morning, 69 and sunny in Bellingham. I’m still really tired from all the family fun last week, but I’ve nearly got the laundry done and Sue will be here this afternoon so the house will be clean again. I’ll do some desk work this morning, see the dentist mid afternoon, and then deep water the garden.

    Best wishes to all.

  4. Good morning, meeses! Thursday …

    It is 68 degrees in Madison with an expected daytime high of 86. Sunny skies are in the forecast. We were under a tornado watch yesterday evening but the storm system stayed north of us. We should have relative peace and quiet over the next four days as temperatures will come down a bit starting tomorrow. The oppressive heat indexes are gone.

    One headline this morning: “Republican governors risk becoming the face of the delta surge.” Too late! But it won’t matter because those who admire them – and will vote for them again – have closed their minds to the facts. Even the deathbed epiphanies of right-wingers won’t help. Masking is the only way to survive this surge and the “masks=tyranny” crowd has their base enthralled.

    The former US Attorney from Georgia testified that he resigned because tRump wanted him to lie about the Georgia election and he wouldn’t. It is heartening to think that there may still be Republicans who respect the rule of law – or at least realize that lying about a legal matter can wreck your law career. That guy was probably put in place by the Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III Justice Department so you know, by definition, that he is a garbage person. I wonder what made him decide what the bright line was? I hope the Fulton County District Attorney charges tRump and his minions for attempted election fraud – it appears that Merrick Garland’s Justice Department does not have the courage to prosecute crimes committed by the Trump Administration lest they appear political. Sad for our democracy that we have a “tradition” of not going after former presidents for their crimes.

    I heard a Texas House member, who has been in Washington DC, interviewed yesterday on TV and she said that the Democratic caucus is heading back to Texas. They said they had planned to only stay as long as the chance of a voting rights bill existed and now there is none. What an embarrassing failure of Senate Democrats! The Texas Democrats risked – and still risk – arrest to come to Washington DC to plead the case for protecting their constituents right to vote and to have their votes counted and they were turned aside. The Senate is already a terrible idea with their 2 Senators per state regardless of population but when you add in the filibuster, you turn over the country to minority rule. Manchin, Sinema, Feinstein, and the Delaware Senators should be scorned for the destroyers of democracy that they are.

    See all y’all later!

  5. Thursday Meese. We are under an “Excessive Heat Warning” here in Kingston. Temp will be 95 but feel like 110.

    Thanks Joe.

    • It was an excellent choice, we are fortunate that Joe Biden had the courage to select her – the left-of-the-left and Republicans (sometimes indistinguishable) despise her and keep trying to bring her down. They will fail.

      You are getting our old weather! The humidity was oppressive and I was glad to have air conditioning.

    • Aww…I remember how excited we all were and how I immediately shot off the biggest donation I could afford. She’s getting the experience she needs.

      I’ve altered my opinion of Biden. I think he was, and is, the man of the hour. I don’t think any other Democrat could have been elected and if it weren’t for him we’d have 2 to 4 more years of, ah, Thing. (I still expect TFG to die just any day now.)

      Kamala, Nancy, Tish. Women to admire and emulate!

    • You & I gonna have the same weather today. Global warming. sigh. Take care of yourself as best you can. {{{HUGS}}}

  6. Puerto Rico

  7. Good morning, everyone. Back did not like yesterday, I slept with capsaicin & lidocaine patches all over my back. Waiting till I’m more awake to put fresh ones on this morning. Meanwhile, breakfast & tea. There’s a state senator doing a filibuster of an anti-voting bill; she kept it up overnight. And that’s about all my brain can do.

    • {{{anotherdemocrat}}} Healing Energy for your back – & whatever else – moar {{{HUGS}}}

  8. It’s 82 heading for the same weather Dee’s looking at. But we’re in AR. It’s normal to get these in the summer here. Not comfortable but normal. Yesterday we generated 17.9 KWHs and 171 for the m-t-d starting out this morning. I wish if we’re gonna get the normal heat we’d get the normal sunshine to go with it.

    One of the places Jill’s applied for funding (for the non-profit/ministry she’s trying to start) makes all kinds of nice noises about helping folks get started – but put all kinds of road blocks in the way of actually doing it. They want a picture of you doing whatever it is – which is fine if you’re crocheting scarves or making chairs but doesn’t work if you’re using internet technology to help disabled people get services they don’t know exist. If not that, then a picture of the person applying “in a professional setting” – and oh, by the way, it can’t be a selfie. They also want a year’s worth of receipts from your business. Which of course if you’re trying to start one doesn’t have any. And all you get for the trouble of telling them so, again, is “please update your application with the requested information.” Sigh. She’s still being harassed although the dogs, thank heavens, have kept the harassers away from the house proper. So far. (& I’m posting late this morning because I’ve been on the phone with her for the last 45 minutes.)

    I haven’t checked in with anybody else at this point. Holding the Good Thoughts all around. Heading for twitter to do my twitter stuff. Bright the day, Meeses. {{{HUGS}}}

  9. Well, this has been a busy day! It’s still Thurday, 12 August. We picked up Nora as scheduled, went to the supermarket to order the birthday cake, and have been doing something every minute. Miss Pink Cheeks accounted for all the Sungold tomatoes I picked this morning—LOL! She’s growing patio tomatoes at home.

    Had a bit of good news: it seems when Younger Son put their former house on the rental market, 30 people from all walks of life wanted to rent it! They finally rented it to the Third Secretary of the Saudi Arabian embassy, who’s been assigned to DC for five years. He signed a four-year lease! He also gets a quarters allowance, he told Younger Son. So they are very pleased they don’t have to worry about tenants for four years.

    Other than that, I’m exhausted. Tomorrow morning I’ll be cooking the Full English, so I’ll be late getting here again.

    We had a hideously hot day. The temperature reached 100 F. at Dulles Airport. However, there are no threatening clouds.

    That’s it for me, folks. Until tomorrow!

    • Excellent news on the rental – that would be a huge relief to not have to worry about finding new tenants every year!

  10. Good morning, meeses! Friday …

    It is 63 degrees in Madison with an expected daytime high of 77. Sunny skies are in the forecast. I see “sitting on the deck” in my future.

    America’s white majority is shrinking. I have no problem with “white people” in general, I am one, but if they have to learn to share power with minorities, we will be a better country. The Hispanic population in Wisconsin is now the largest minority – I wish Democrats had been able to capture them as a voting bloc but many are hard-core Republican. I don’t pretend to know what drives them to embrace a political ideology that calls them “rapists and murderers” but then I never understood the Log Cabin Republicans, either. Money “trumps” all?

    I just finished reading an article in the New York Times about the challenge that colleges and universities face for Fall. University of Texas at San Antonio just went remote – they can’t open for in-person classes because of the delta surge in their community. So the Great Reopening has been stopped dead in its tracks by the Great Emptyheadedness of the #RepublicanDeathCult. Over 400 schools are requiring vaccinations and Indiana University (in a deep red state) just won a battle at the Supreme Court to keep their mandate – I hope more schools find the courage to do the right thing. Mask mandates, vaccine mandates or go home. One school I was reading about added a $750 a semester COVID fee for anyone who is unvaccinated to help pay for testing. Maybe $$$ will make a difference. In Wisconsin, the university system is defying a Republican legislative attempt to deny them the right to have the mandates and the vaccine-or-test policy. I am sure it will end up in the courts but in the meantime, it is in place. My daughter and her friends are looking forward to a return to in-person classes and some semblance of normalcy.

    Afghanistan, a country we should never have invaded, is being “overrun” by Afghans who were artificially kept out of power by U.S. forces. Yes, the Taliban is terrible but so is the Saudi royal family. You can’t choose the leaders for a country or make a country democratic. Vietnam was “overrun” by Vietnamese when we left that country and now they are a U.S. trading partner. We can hope that the bloodbath is short-lived and that Afghans settle back into the warring tribes they have been for centuries before the Soviet Union and then the United States thought they could change them. No, Joe Biden did not do this – George W. Bush’s invasion of the country with no plans for post-invasion set the stage for the inevitable return of the Taliban.

    It is the end of another week and I have made some progress on my house clearing/cleaning but not as much as I had hoped. I have an aggressive to-do list for the weekend and I hope to emerge on Monday morning being able to see the light at the end of the tunnel. I had to take a several day break from it this past week because it seemed so overwhelming – every closet door I opened had stuff that needed to be dealt with. Today I feel a little better with the weekend stretching out in front of me. I have only one work project and the rest of my time can be dedicated to the clearing work.

    See all y’all later!

  11. Good morning. Back is still a little stiff. Plan for today: work, get up & stretch once an hour, pick up groceries this afternoon.

  12. Today’s supposed to be pretty much the same as yesterday except overcast unless the projected rain moves in sooner than late afternoon. We’ve got rain in the forecast for the next 10 days but only tonight and tomorrow above 50% chance. The rest of the time it straddles the 25% line. Which means clouds but no water. sigh. We generated 17.6 KWHs yesterday – a nominally sunny day – and are at 188.95 m-t-d to start the day. We should make it to 200 today, unless it gets a lot more overcast, but how much above that. . .

    Jill should be leaving for town in another hour or so. Hold the Good Thoughts – aside from the “normal” water, food/dogfood/supplies, laundry, and mail she’s supposedly going to get her ID. (I say supposedly because the county has sent her away twice on excuses that she didn’t have the “proper” documentation – mostly because they didn’t bother to look at it before sending her away.) & she can’t file the divorce papers without one. (She’s got to make a separate $50 trip to town Monday for the Court appointment.) Everybody else is doing the same as far as I know. Which of course means they need Good Thoughts too.

    Our team’s leaders don’t seem to but the fascist/Deplorables leaders certainly understand how everything is connected to everything else. So they know they only have to keep their cult followers pushing one thing to stop progress. We have to address the whole thing to make progress and that indeed is harder. But whether it’s white-privilege blindness – just not seeing some of the parts – or a “lighter” version of white supremacist racism, we aren’t even trying. Even as we make mouth noises about doing so. sigh. I appreciate our team for the good we’ve accomplished. I truly do & yes, there’s a “but” following that. The border wall is still being built. Families are still be snatched and separated. The quarters are better but kids are still being “caged” away from their folks. And while yes, our team has handled pandemic much better that TFG, we still aren’t handling it well. sigh. But we do what we can. And keep on keepin’ on.

    Momma used to say, “it takes money to make money” – who she was quoting I don’t know – but she/they were right. A couple of grand is sometimes all it takes to be able to make a move or get a business going. No much. Unless you don’t have it. sigh. Coffee. Off to twitter. Bright the day, Meeses. {{{HUGS}}}

  13. Good Friday morning, Moose Peeps. It’s already 90 F. at this hour (10:30), and the forecast is for thunderstorms. It’s going up to 97 F., or so they say. Perhaps I ought to take Miss Pink Cheeks to the clubhouse for swimming sooner rather than later.

    We just finished a HUGE breakfast. Canadian bacon, scrambled eggs, Texas-style biscuits with butter and strawberry jam, and OJ. Today is Dearly’s 91st birthday. He was born within the sound of Bow Bells in the days when there were Bow Bells, so he’s a true Cockney. He was very pleased with his birthday presents of beer, wine, and lottery tickets.

    We pulled out the little brown sofa in my office into a double bed for Miss Nora. Yesterday evening she was in the bedroom on her laptop, playing a game with one of her friends, shrieking with laughter. I thought, “I wish I were a child again and didn’t know anything about All This.” But no, the child asked me if we were right to pull out of Afghanistan, and about Delta ravaging the country. So even at 12 they don’t escape.

    Time to do some laundry. My sister-in-law in Australia wrote me a heart-rending email. Apparently her spine is slowly crumbling inside her and she is in great pain. On top of this my brother-in-law, Jack, has Alzheimer’s. She is his sole caregiver, so life is not easy for her. We’re going to try to Zoom with them tomorrow night.

    Jan, you sound as if you’re making great progress! Hope you can get the rest done. I was reading the obits, as usual, and learned that someone had died of an aneurysm. That made me think I should take care of my stuff rather quickly.

    On that cheery note, I’ll wish everyone at the Pond a good day.

    • Happy Birthday to Dearly 🎶✨🎉🎊🍨🎂🎁🎶 – He’s exactly one week older than Momma would have been were she still here. (No, the news doesn’t escape 12 year-olds. They tend not to talk about it unless they trust the grownups around them. That she asked you about it is very much a complement.)

      Healing Energy all around & {{{Diana}}}

    • When I saw what my in-town siblings were left with after my mother’s passing, I vowed to make it easier for my daughter. She will not have siblings to help and the cousins she is closest to are far away. Everything I can do now to organize my belongings in a way that makes it simple to decide what to keep and what to throw away will help. My “plan” is to stay alive into my 80s as my parents and (all but one) of my grandparents did but after last spring’s COVID scare, when I realized that if I died I would leave a ginormous mess, the time is now. We might have only a window of time – right now all the donation and junk sites are accepting things but if they shut down before I get to my goal, that would suck. Thus the urgency.

  14. Good morning, 64 with hazy skies and smoky air in Bellingham. I’ve got to work at my desk today so I’ll stay indoors as much as possible. It’s warm enough to fill the splash pool again but I’ll wait until the air is less smoky.

    Looks like Ryan will be here longer than planned. Thanks to covid vacc liars John’s (his dad) co-worker has covid so John and Lisa are isolating until they can get a covid test and Ryan will stay here until it’s sorted out. John’s co-worker is vaccinated so he’s not too sick but the two liars are not vaccinated and infected a lot of people, grrrrrr! Ryan finished the work project at our son’s office so we’ll work on the garage project as soon as my knees allow.

    The ongoing covid threat exhausting but all we can do is stay as safe and sane as possible. Best wishes to all.

    • {{{princesspat}}} At least Ryan’s safe with you for now. At this point I assume that anyone not masked in public is also not vaxxed. Period. I don’t care what they say. Healing Energy for all your household/extended family.

  15. Good morning, meeses! Saturday …

    It is 52 degrees in Madison with an expected daytime high of 77. It is foggy now but sunny skies expected later.

    As expected, the faux allies in the #NeverTrump movement are angry and upset because Joe Biden refuses to bolster their case that George W. Bush’s excursion into Afghanistan was not craptastically designed and implemented and a monumental disaster. Going in, destroying Al Qaeda’s bases, and then leaving would have been smarter but would not have given a $4 trillion boost to the military-industrial complex that they cherish more than the democracy they pretend to care about. I can’t watch Nicole Wallace’s show on MSNBC any longer as she fills it with her friends who are determined to make her old boss look good when he was literally saved from being the worst president in history by Donald J. Trump’s inauguration. She should be embarrassed to cheerlead for him and Dick “dick” Cheney who killed millions with their lies and ignorance. Until there is true remorse from those who paved the way for trumpism by their partisan support of The Stupid, they can’t be trusted. An article I read this morning provides this reminder: “While history offered U.S. leaders 3,000 years of warnings, it does not offer them an excuse.” We needed to leave in 2001 but the warmongers in Washington decided to stay and then expand the conflict to Iraq. THEY own the bloodbath in Afghanistan, not Joe Biden.

    In Wisconsin, Marc Elias and his group have fired the first shot in the gerrymandering wars, filing a lawsuit in federal court asking them to set up timelines for the redistricting:

    “There is no reasonable prospect that Wisconsin’s political branches will reach consensus to enact lawful legislative and congressional district plans in time to be used in the upcoming 2022 election,” the lawsuit states. “In the last four decades, each time Wisconsin’s political branches were split along partisan lines, federal judicial intervention was necessary to implement new state legislative plans.”

    The Democrats are asking the court to “prepare itself to intervene” in the state’s redistricting process by establishing its jurisdiction now, and setting up a schedule for maps to be passed, after which time the court would assume control if the political branches don’t reach a consensus.

    I am glad to see this.

    Busy day here as I organize my weekend projects to try to get ahead of next weeks very busy schedule.

    See all y’all later!

  16. Saturday Meese. 72 going up to 82 here in Kingston. I’m groggy cause was up later than usual. Did a talk (via zoom)at the Salem Witchcraft and Folklife Festival. Enjoyed it.

    Puerto Rico

  17. Good morning, everyone. Eating breakfast & watching the news. No idea what I’m going to do today. Allergies are really bad, but it is supposed to rain this evening. That will wash out the pollen, but then mold will increase.

  18. It’s 71 heading for 85 & overcast but not too bad. I need the lights still, but just barely. I’m hoping to keep the A/C off today. I won’t even need to close up until after 10. relieved sigh. I don’t feel trapped in the house. Yesterday we generated 13.5 KWHs (m-t-d 202.58) so thank heavens the coolth preceded the rain by a few hours and I was able to shut off the A/C and open the house by 7 pm.

    When a dream turns into a nightmare, first you gotta get out of the nightmare before you can take time to mourn the dream. Hold the Good Thoughts for Jill. We think/hope that we’ve got a temporary (over a month under a year) solution for her if we can manage it. Everybody else is pretty much the same. May or may not be progressing. May or may not be in a nightmare of their own. But nothing escalating dangerously. (Chewy is being very disappointing. After using them for decades, Amelia’s now getting shipments that aren’t packed correctly – 6 out 8 this year – so that cans are dented and sometimes, like yesterday, one of the pop-top cans of Winston’s special food actually explodes in the box. And covers all the rest with catfood because the shredded kraft paper that normally would be packed around the cans and either stop it from happening in the first place or contain it if it did isn’t there. So instead of whatever Amelia had planned for the day, she spends hours cleaning up the other cans and dealing with the mess and usually at least another half hour on the phone with Chewy being smoozed. They send her “free” replacement shipments that are just as badly packed as the one it’s replacing. Definitely something wrong at Chewy. But that doesn’t replace Amelia’s “spoons” wasted on doing something she shouldn’t need to do.)

    Anyway, I need to deal with some cat barf. Cats. And then get my 2nd mug of coffee and over to twitter. Bright the day, Meeses. {{{HUGS}}}

  19. Good morning, 72 and sunny, but the air us still smoky. I stayed inside most of yesterday but still felt the effects of the smoked filled air. Thankfully the bay breeze has kept the air cleaner where we live than it is in the surrounding areas. Wind patterns will change tomorrow and if the rain forecast happens the air will be clear again.
    I’m really enjoying time with Ryan. It’s easier to build a relationship with grand kids when then are young than it is when they are older. So having this time together is impt. Time for coffee, and as always, my best wishes to all.

Comments are closed.